Specification of requirements guide

Meaning

  • The goal of specification of requirements is to map the needs of a customer for the system to be designed and implemented
  • It is important to pay attention and present the possible technical limitations for the customer

Content

  • The following parts will be defined with customer:
    • Users, operating environment and all possible use cases
    • Limitations (for example the implementation tools available)
    • Connections to other systems
    • Functions, user interface
    • Non-functional properties like
      • response times
      • security
      • usability
      • maintainability
      • mobility
  • In addition, it is highly recommended to categorize what requirements must be included and what are optional

Specification of requirements parts

Topic

  • Group members
  • Version number and date
  1. Briefing
    • For what purpose will this system be developed, who will be the user(s) and what are the goals of the system?
    • The presentation of relevant terms and references to all necessary documents
  2. General description
    • Connections to other systems, system users and operating environment description
    • Possible limitations
  3. Functions
    • Required functions for the system described in general level
    • Categorize all functions (required or optional)
  4. External connections
    • More precise description of connections to other systems. For example user interface description and how it is communicating with the database.
  5. Other properties
    • Describe required non-functional properties: performance, usability, security, recovery from malfunction, maintainability, mobility etc.
    • Requirements are usually presented so that testing for requirements is possible (for example response time limit of 2 seconds can be measured)

Specification of requirements example

Course management system

  • Group members: Student1, Student2
  • Version 0.1 (25.1.2020)
  1. Briefing
    • System will be developed for the teacher and the group of students. The goal is to retrieve and manage information of teaching material storage locations. Report of teaching material locations ordered by location must be retrievable.
  2. General description
    • System will be stored to teachers network drive. First version does not include external connections so students cannot add teaching material locations. MariaDB will be used as a database product. Teacher IDs and names can be retrieved from student register system. Permissions for database usage are defined with functions of DBMS (separate tables for storing user account information is not required).
  3. Functions
    • Required
      1. Teacher information (ID, name, department, homepage etc.) management
      2. Location information (name) management
      3. Teaching material information (name and accurate location address) management
      4. Report of teachers (name, department) teaching materials (name, location address) ordered by location name
    • Optional
      1. View for students to see the locations of teaching material
  4. External connections
    • No connections to other systems
  5. Other properties
    • Performance: response times for basic PC (Windows 10, 8 GB RAM and a modern processor) when retrieving 10000 lines of data should be under one second. Security: Only teachers should have permissions to modify the data in database. Students can have read permissions for the system on the future versions of the system. Usability: Database data will be accessed and manipulated through web-based user interface developed with the database.